It's been a while since I've updated. It's been a crazy couple of weeks, it seems like life speeds up and it never slows down. Lots of hanging out, tinkering around, hiking and festivals to keep super busy.
I've been feeling like I've lost my groove in a lot of ways and my angst and frustration about that came to a head on during a sleepless night on Monday. It seems that too many things slip through the grasp of my feeble memory, turning me into the kind of flaky person that frustrates me so much. Focus is hard to come by at work and I find myself weighed down on the personal side by issues that I've either created for myself or let build up over time, too long unhandled, like a tumor spreading through the body.
Seems like I'm on a precipice about all that - either I can get a handle on everything, gain some focus, simplify my life and hopefully succeed wildly at work and at home, or I can continue on the road I've been going down. Red pill or blue pill?
I'm reminded of an observation that Milan Kundera made in his novel Slowness - the degree to which we experience life is proportional to its slowness. I've been accused of being slow and leisurely on my course through life, and that even when I'm in a hurry, I'm never really in a hurry. To me, I'm just trying to experience life a little bit while it's passing me by.
Posted 8/22/2002 by Unstable Human
You work someplace cool when, at 4:00, you go to the fridge, grab a beer (left over from shipping party), walk past your manager and he says: "Is that a beer?" "Yes." "Well good for you!"
Posted 8/16/2002 by Unstable Human
While eating some reheated chicken caccitore, leaning over my computer, trying to eat and jockey the mouse at the same time while wearing a white T-Shirt, I ran across yet another reason I always keep an extra shirt at work.
It's official, the entertainment industry declares war on its customers. But this is an interesting concept: the law goes both ways. I'd love to see them hoist by their own petard. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I say.
I've realized that the moment I get to work, I need to start working. Otherwise the day is shot. Keeping that fire and motion analogy alive, it's imperative to take some ground early or spend the who day retreating. There's probably a nugget of a time management philosophy in there: set the pace of the day early and do it right.
Another entry for the pet peeve list: people who cannot stand for others to be happy. Come to them with some good news, they try to find a way to spoil it. If you want to be a depressed freak, fine, but don't spread your disease around here, ok?
In the words of Lazarus Long: Pessimists may be right more often, but optimists have more fun.
Posted 8/16/2002 by Unstable Human
Looking at this random internet comic: Get Your War On. On Page 12 was this great comment on Operation TIPS:
The meter reader is supposed to SPY on me to find out if I'm a terrorist? If the whole country is gonna play 'Behind the Iron Curtain,' there better be some fine fucking state subsidized alcohol! And our powerlifting team better kick ass!
Posted 8/15/2002 by Unstable Human
Going to the coffee pot, I notice that the pot is empty, except for about half a cup. I know the thinking: if you empty the pot, you need to refill it, but if you almost empty the pot, it's all good. So instead of putting on a new pot, leave a ridiculously small amount. Then the next person, inevitably me, is stuck making a new pot.
Also, no matter how posh the office is, no matter how high it is on the social echelon, people still don't flush the toilet in the bathroom.
Posted 8/15/2002 by Unstable Human
After 354 long days of wandering, my girlfriend is out of the desert. Yes, she has a job. Senior Account Executive at a PR agency in town. Think of her when you eat Krispy Kremes.
Posted 8/14/2002 by Unstable Human
I've long described shipping software as the "Agony and the Ecstacy" (also a brilliant novel by Irving Stone.) One moment the product seems to be invincible and ready to take over the world. The next moment I'm wondering if it will ever be usable. I got two messages on the same day from two different users. One user said it was the most innovative thing he has seen in years. The other said it was not ready for sale, or even beta. Hmmm.
Posted 8/14/2002 by Unstable Human
In Joel's anecdote about Fire and Motion, he talks about strategy in the trenches during a ground war:
You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can't fire at you. (That's what the soldiers mean when they shout "cover me." It means, "fire at our enemy so he has to duck and can't fire at me while I run across this street, here." It works.) The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you're not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you're not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down.
Today's been a good day. Fired off some code, moved forward a little bit.
And keep your fingers crossed, there's a chance my girlfriend's unemployment will be over soon. Parched in the desert for a year now, there's water in the distance. But is it a mirage rather than an oasis?
Posted 8/13/2002 by Unstable Human
"At a cellular level, I'm really quite busy" [Evhead].
The blogosphere must be reaching a critical mass. I consistently hear well thought out analysis long before it shows up in the for-profit publications that claim to offer strategy and intelligence services. For example, Nick Denton said the following on Aug. 4, 2002:
The US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime because he's a bad man, sure, because he may conceivably be connected with Al-Qaeda, because he's developing weapons of mass destruction, because a friendly Iraq would alter the balance of power in the Middle East, sure, because of all of that. But the US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime mainly because the West needs to humiliate the Arab world, and dispel the Islamic millenial fantasy.
And then Stratfor, one of my favorites for in-depth political analysis wrote yesterday:
Nevertheless, this is the best explanation for the Iraq obsession. It is about psychology and long-term relationships and not about immediate impacts. It is designed to weaken al Qaeda's soul, not to cripple its operational capability. If you see al Qaeda as fundamentally a psychological response, the strategy might just work
I'm torn. I always considered myself a bleeding-heart leftist, but getting Hussein out of power sounds like a better idea every day. I'm worried he's going to do something crazy to make his mark on history. He doesn't have that long left.
Posted 8/13/2002 by Unstable Human
I like to think about what I would ask for if a genie came to me and offered me anything I could think of. After I wished for more wishes, ended war and famine and got myself that Knight Rider car, it's a challenging question.
I would wish for focus. I might be the least focused person in the world and it drives me nuts because I know I could acheive so much more in life and be a better person if I could just focus. Lately it seems that I can't get anything done at work, I can't stay in touch with my family, I can't call my friends on the phone, I can't get anything done around the house or get the bills paid on time. When I try to clean, I get distracted by something else every two seconds - a book, the vacuum cleaner, a flower, a fly on the wall. Sometimes I can't even fall asleep because there are so many thoughts running through my head.
I felt really bad about it at work because I felt like I'd get in three hours of work on a good day, and if people knew the truth, I'd be kicked out of the building before the door hit my butt. Then I read this article by Brother Joel and I felt much better. It's sort of like masturbation, it feels like a dirty secret until you realize that everyone's doing it as much as you do.
Posted 8/13/2002 by Unstable Human
Two new sets of photos. Some pop art I ran across this weekend, and a hike we took yesterday.
Posted 8/12/2002 by Unstable Human
My formative years were during the 80s, when it was fashionable to believe that men needed to be more emotional and sensitive. The feminist movement has since seen the light, but I still bear the scars. Sometimes I feel that sensitivity and niceness are cases of people believing they want something in a person that they don't really want once they have it.
Of course that's overstating things, but it seems true sometimes. Every personality trait has its positivies and negatives. The positives of being nice and sensitive are indirect, such as being considerate, romantic and wanting to please. The negatives, like being neurotic and easily bruised emotionally are instantly recognized as its dark side.
I doubt I will ever hear a woman say, "I'm happy you're so sensitive," although I've heard the opposite plenty of times.
Posted 8/12/2002 by Unstable Human
Some new sections of this site are live. A wine log highlighting one of my favorite vices and an Outdoor Journal describing outdoorsy things that I've done recently.
Steve Albini, a Record Producer for Sub Pop, talks about the problem with music nowadays.
The Memory Hole - a treasure trove of things that people don't want you to know. There are some gems, but just because it's on the Internet, doesn't mean it's true, kiddies.
Joe Eszterhas, a screenwriter who worked on Basic Instinct, among other movies, beleves that Hollywood should be held responsible for encouraging children to smoke, and for the trail of cancer and death they have left behind. These are the same people who are trying to pass laws in congress to cripple my computer.
It's been my view that the pro-life political movement is really focused on punishing and humiliating people, mainly poor, single women, rather than actually ending abortion. A florida law requiring women to publish their sexual histories in the newspaper before putting babies up for adoption provides even more evidence that this is true.
Posted 8/10/2002 by Unstable Human
Trading one productivity tool for another.
The Excursion not big enough for you? Try the SUV of the Future!
Posted 8/8/2002 by Unstable Human
If you're not a geek, you wouldn't know that there is a battle going on for what you are allowed to do with the music you listen to, the movies you watch, your television, your computer, your VCR, your DVD player and any other device you have that is smarter than a toaster. It started a few years ago with the Digital Millenium Copyright act and it continues as a legislative strategy of the recording and movie industry. This strategy claims to be aimed at preventing copying and illegal use of their material, but it is really about establishing and protecting distribution cartels on and offline and making it impossible for poorly-funded, independant artists to compete with the big labels. I have not yet heard an artist claim that mp3s, CD burning or downloads are a threat to their financial well-being. I've heard more than one small artist say they have benefitted.
I'd sum up the issue and arguments here, but Glenn Reynolds, a Law Professor, does it better than me. [link]
I'm sure if consumers understood what this legislation and its brethren mean for them, there would be outrage, but the public's level of awareness is low right now. Hollywood did not pay for my computer, I don't want them to control what I do with equipment that I own. If you want to do something, send a message to your congressperson here. To date, they have been more than happy to carry the water for the entertainment industry even though their legislation flies in the face of the peoples' interests.
Posted 8/7/2002 by Unstable Human
It's funny how most decisions have expiration dates, after which point everyone needs to get together and have an argument that usually ends up reconfirming the decision made in the first place. On one level it seems ridiculous, but on another level, circumstances can change and decisions can get moldy and the only thing worse than arguing the same thing over and over again is getting trapped in an old decision.
Posted 8/7/2002 by Unstable Human
This has been one of those days where my throat hurts from talking so much.
This has been one of those days where, after meeting for two hours, my brain hurts and I'm not sure what came out of it.
Posted 8/6/2002 by Unstable Human
This weekend followed a strange pattern of getting off to a rough start and eventually working out really well. After a hellacious day at work, I was running an hour late getting out of town, but we found a great camping spot, which was eventually overrun by vermin, or more accurately a caravan of SUVs, barking dogs and mewling toddlers who camped right on top of us, then to an even better camping spot down the road right next to the river. Then we went hiking straight uphill in the cold wind and rain to an idyllic high-mountain lake and the sun cleared, warmed us up and dried us out. Photos are here.
A weekend lesson that situations are what you make of them, and after a late start, a disrupted campground, a cold, wet hike and a weekend of deluging rain, we had a wonderful weekend camping.
I realized that good humor in stressful situations is really important to me in a person. Life is short and fraught with challenges, too many to be surrounded by people who only make life harder.
Posted 8/5/2002 by Unstable Human
I hate to admit it, but I'm an engineer and sometimes I act like it even though I don't have the engineer's classic personality type. In Myers-Briggs parlance, I am an idealist but I spend my days writing software so I've acquired a lot of engineer traits. Sometimes I think that I've combined the worst of both worlds: I'm argumentative and critical like an engineer, but I'm soft and irrational emotionally.
One lesson I keep on learning is how important it is to leave parts of that engineer's nature at work and not let it drift into my personal life. For example, when an engineer gets a what do you think about this... question, a good engineer thinks long and hard about every flaw and problem. If we passively accepted each others' ideas and approaches, our software would be worse than it already is. So we criticize every thought and idea, especially the good ones - the bad ones aren't worth the time. So if you get lots of criticism in engineering land, that means that you have a good idea. That's fine and good, but that outlook needs to stay at work.
A bad time to be an engineer is when your girlfriend asks what you think of her cooking.
Posted 8/5/2002 by Unstable Human
Driving past Buca di Beppo this morning, I saw this classic banner. On the left was a photo like one that is on the front of a pulp romance novel. There was a woman, beautiful in the classic sense, wearing a red satin dress, her face was flushed and the dress was halfway off her neck. There is a man in a flowing shirt, unbuttoned enough to show his chest (muscular and hairless of course). On the right, the banner says: Buca for two. Take her tonight. One of the best double entendres I have seen in a while.
Posted 8/2/2002 by Unstable Human
After eating lots of Mexican food, Mark and I went four-wheeling up to Kingston Peak and the Loch Lomond overlook. Four wheeling is a lot different at night, especially after a stomach full of Mexican food. We got to an overlook right as the last wisps of twilight were leaving the mountains. Listened to Stan Ridgway while watching the iridescent, orange glow from Denver.
Posted 8/1/2002 by Unstable Human
I think that some people are just bent on messing themselves up. No matter how much you warn them, how often you try to help. That's one of those lessons I learn over and over again. I guess some people only learn things the hard way.
Posted 8/1/2002 by Unstable Human